Lawyers

Lawyers 

See Also: LAW, PROFESSIONS

1. A certain criminal lawyer, like a trapeze performer, is seldom more than one step from an awful fate —Paul O’Neil, Life, June 22, 1959
2. A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats —Benjamin Franklin
3. The glory of lawyers, like that of men of science, is more corporate than individual —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., April 15, 1890
4. If you would wax thin and savage, like a half-fed spider, be a lawyer —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

   Holmes senior gave up the law for a career in medicine and literature. His son, on the other hand, enjoyed a distinguished legal career culminated by his appointment to the Supreme Court.

5. A lawyer’s face always gives warning of an ambush. Like a blockhouse. Used to conceal the artillery —Joyce Cary
6. A lawyer awaiting a decision in a big case is like a murderer waiting for the jury to come out —Robert Traver

   In the novel, Laughing Whitefish, this continues in both, wistful hope mingles inevitably with gloom and foreboding.

7. A lawyer deep in his case is like a man fallen in love. Whether shaving or bathing or plain old-fashioned knaving, in bed or out, always and forever he is obsessed by his goddam case —Robert Traver

   A variation of this from People Versus Kirk also appears in Traver’s best known novel, Anatomy of a Murder.

8. A lawyer lacking a flock of law books is like a carpenter run out of nails —Robert Traver
9. A lawyer preparing for the trial of a difficult and complex case … is like a man consulting a dictionary who winds up chasing everything but the word he needs —Robert Traver
10. Lawyers are just like physicians: what one says, the other contradicts —Sholom Aleichem
11. Lawyers, like bread, are best when they are young and new —Thomas Fuller
12. Lawyers on opposite sides of a case are like the two parts of shears; they cut what comes between them, but not each other —Daniel Webster
13. Like most corporate attorneys, he sat squarely on the fence with both ears to the ground —Anon
14. Years of practice had made them sensitive to every whimsy of emotion and taught them how to play upon the psychology of the jury as the careless zephyr softly draws its melody from the aeolian harp —Arthur Train